Walt Whitman said "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." Among my multitudes are Buddhism, pacifism, polyamory, self-examination, libraries, and science. Perhaps my various adventures will be interesting to others.

we fell in with vast meadows of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right Whale largely feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us, so that we seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat.

you can hardly regard any creatures of the deep with the same feelings that you do those of the shore. For though some old naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land are of their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general view of the thing, this may very well be; yet coming to specialties, where, for example, does the ocean furnish any fish that in disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog?

Does he hunt the dog in the same way I wonder?

Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

Universal cannibalism...really? Oh, so he's making a metaphorical point.

Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.

Referring to the Spirit-Spout of Chapter 51:And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring jet would be seen.

Squid:

...we now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach.

Furlong = 220 yards = 201 meters

As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed--"Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!"